Boiling Point: Party disasters to avoid

It’s a party, it’s a fire, it’s Willie Nelson on the roof. Learn from my mistakes.

Jim Hillibish

Party failures — learn from my mistakes.

They’re telling the truth about seafood. A few minutes on a humid appetizer table and whamo, your party ends in the emergency room.

I made a salmon soufflé (salmon, eggs, cream — how toxic is that?). Nobody ate it, not even the dog. It just sat there, smelling. It was so bad, it would not even compost. It sat on the heap for six months.

Another year, it was creamed herring. One whiff, forget it. I found herring the next day in my houseplants. Other candidates for the compost heap are Waka-Waka Salad, Tuna Cream Appetizer and Famous Sardine and Calamari Puffs.

Which brings up the ice thing. If you have any seafood on your party table, ice it or keep it on a warmer. It not only looks safer, it is. Then pray, please.

If you don’t like something (highly probable at my parties), don’t feed it to the dog. Oh, the dog will appreciate it, all right. But soon we’ll find the octopus and rice bean appetizers up-chucked on the living-room floor. This is not exactly four stars for your cooking.

We always endure party emergencies. One night, our furnace refused to shut off. It kept getting hotter until our guests were gasping (and the appetizers were self-cooking). You want to turn the furnace down before a party. People bring their own heat.

I quit making punch. My wife made a nice bowl full. I gave it a taste test and somehow was convinced she’d forgotten the booze. So I punched it up.

Punch is a real killer. The sweet stuff disguises the hootch. Then you find yourself wondering why your face hurts. Look in the mirror, rum dummy, at the Cheshire-cat grin.

Then Sam fell into the Christmas tree.

I got a a thank-you note from him after that one. Quote: “I was having a great time until somebody stepped on my hands.”

The days of the huge booze-a-thons are kaput, good riddance. Perhaps it was a rite of post-teen tomfoolery. We had a cocktail party. One of the guests wound up singing Willie Nelson songs, on our roof. (You know who you are.)

I made sliders one year, those incredible mini-cheeseburgers. This one shows what happens when something is too good. First guy through on the food line took four, guy behind him finished them. My rule: Never make popular appetizers. People will eat them.

If you don’t have enough cheese, leave it in the block, unsliced. Inebriated people fear knives. The same goes for cheese balls. We can’t live with them in normal times, but during parties, we always need MORE cheese balls.

Ever think about what’s in a cheese ball, what makes them such a pinnacle of deliciousness? Well, there’s cheese, but that’s not enough cholesterol. There’s a lot of butter, perhaps some lard in the old recipes and cream. And in good ones, lots of bacon. Serve with a side of Lipitor.

Also, don’t get in over your head. We had a massive Christmas party. I was cooking for two days. By H-Hour on D-Day, I was near wreckage.

One last appetizer to go: Phyllo cheese puffs. I put a few dozen on cookie sheets and into the oven for a quick broil to puff them.

Then our fire alarms went off. Smoke was pouring from the oven — massive, black clouds. I opened it, and the puffs went up in a puff, a conflagration.

It didn’t take the fire marshal to figure out why. The puffs were on rimless cookie sheets. All that butter flowed south onto the oven floor.

We opened the doors and windows, and the smoke billowed out. Then some responsible passer-by called the fire department. It was a full structure-fire response, two pumps, a ladder truck, an ambulance and the batallion chief. They arrived at the exact time our guests were stepping out of their cars.

That, actually, was a pretty good party. We had a lot of laughs about it, and firefighters will eat anything. Warm up the siren — Jim’s cooking again.

This recipe is a certified wowza yowsa. It’s so good, you may not get it to the appetizer table. Thank Dan Kane for insisting we share it.